The Heart that Truly Loves
Page 27
“Well, then, why don’t you run these things out to Sister Fenn for us? You might enjoy seeing the old town again. She’s a widow with several small children to support, and the ladies have some shoes here for the boys, eggs from Sister Fenway’s hen, and a few odds and ends, it looks like.” He peered into a box sitting on a chair beside him, then closed the lid and handed it over to Nicholas. “You be careful with that, now,” he said. “I’ll head your companion in another direction, and we can meet up tonight. But you’d best stay in Gloucester for supper if you’re invited. Sister Fenn is a mighty good cook.”
He had no choice. Brother Forsyth took him to the station and showed him which train to catch, and even gave him change for the fare. It was a perfect day for late summer, with a cool breeze blowing in from the sea. He opened the window beside him, leaned back a little, and closed his eyes. It was as if the sea wind blew the years away from him and the time no longer existed between his first trip to Gloucester and now.
When Nicholas began to walk through town, the rich smell of Gloucester enveloped him. Every inch of the place was familiar, and he felt his heart begin to race in his breast. He detoured down by the waterfront, whistling “Truly, Truly Fair,” and questioned the men on the pier to see if old Daniel was still around.
“He died several years back,” one of them replied, a bit warily, as he scratched the stubble on his chin. “Did you know him, then?”
“Here and in Liverpool,” Nicholas replied. “He was a grand old soul.”
“He was that, indeed.”
The men touched their hats to him as he walked off. He had not dared to ask about Millicent, too. He would go deliver his box to this Widow Fenn and then see if he had courage enough to ask her about Millicent Cooper.
Shuffling out of the main part of town, he realized that he didn’t know where he was supposed to be going, but his feet were taking him by old habit down Hesperus Road. Seeing a boy scrambling up one of the sand hills, he shouted, “Can you tell me where Widow Fenn lives?”
The boy shaded his eyes and called back, “Straight ahead half a mile. Where the land rises sharp-like, veer off to the left. You’ll see it, a little yellow house with gardens all around it.”
Nicholas walked on for some distance before it began to dawn on him that he was heading for Millicent’s house. But that couldn’t be! He turned up the green slope and slowed his steps as he drew closer. His memories had grown too painful. He stooped and set the box on the ground, then started up the rock path to the cottage.
Only then did he see the bent figure in the garden. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my way,” he said gently. “Is this Widow Fenn’s place?”
She looked up. She straightened her back very slowly and rose to her feet. “I am Widow Fenn,” she said, pushing her damp hair back from her forehead. Her eyes were wide and she looked very pale. “I believe, if I remember correctly, that it would be Millicent Cooper to you.”
He said nothing. His eyes filled with tears as he looked at her.
“You’ve come back.” Her voice was no more than a whisper.
“He sent me here.”
“Who sent you?”
“Brother Forsyth, directly.” A hint of the old sparkle began to creep into his eyes. “But before that, I believe the Lord sent me back here, Millie.”
She stared at him for a moment. Her eyes were hard and appraising. “I believe he did, too.”
It was a reply he had not expected.
“Will you come inside where it is cool, and have something to drink?” she asked him.
He followed her into the dim, quiet kitchen. “Brother Forsyth said you have children, several children.” He sat down at the table, and she poured him a drink that tasted of lime and lemon and the last flowers of summer.
“I have,” she replied. “But not a single one of them is really my own.”
While he sipped his drink she told him how she was unable to have children after she married Luther and what sorrow that brought her, and then how Adria came to her. He listened carefully, his hand closed around the cool glass, his eyes never leaving her face. She told of Luther’s death and old Daniel’s death, then interrupted herself suddenly.
“I’ve mixed it all up. There is too much to tell; I can’t tell it all.”
He leaned across the table, still holding her with his gaze. “Begin way back, when I came, before I came. I won’t leave until I know everything. Brother Forsyth even gave me permission to stay to supper if you asked me.” A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth, and the sight of it made Millie tremble inside.
“Then I shall begin with Judith and Verity and Leah on Walnut Street in Boston,” she acquiesced, pulling out a chair and sitting across from him. “I wouldn’t tell you about them before when you were here; my pride prevented me. But you need to know this to understand.”
He listened, though amazement following amazement made his heart freeze in his breast.
“That illuminates many things!” he cried at one point. But then he began to grown solemn and quiet as her tale wove itself out. At last he could bear it no longer. “Why did you not answer my letters?” he asked, and his voice held a tense note of demand in it. “Although I was near dying I wrote to tell you what had happened. And when I was back in Nauvoo I continued to write, for over two years, Millicent!”
She swayed in her chair, and he put his hand out to steady her.
“I wrote to you, but you did not answer me.” Her voice shook a little. “I received no letters! I thought you had died in Liverpool!” She buried her face in her hands.
“You poor thing! Oh, merciful heaven!” Nicholas cried. He leaned over and began very gently to tell Millie the story of his life. Every now and again she bit her lip as the tears welled up in her eyes. As shadows traced their patterns over the deserted garden, the children came tumbling in. Nicholas would have been happy to be introduced to them, despite the interruption, but Millie shook her head.
“There is plenty of time for the children in their turn,” she said firmly, and sent them back outside with fruit and slices of bread. “Play on the beach until you hear me call,” she instructed. That was a directive they could stand to obey, and they all scampered out in high spirits.
When Millie turned back to Nicholas, her face was more pale and drawn than before. “It was Almira,” she said. “Despite her nastiness, her narrowness of soul, I never for one minute suspected her.”
As she explained to Nicholas he rose in agitation and began pacing the floor. A sense of outraged injustice, of being the butt of a cruel game, rose in his throat like bile. But Millie was sitting quietly, her hands folded neatly in her lap over the gardening apron she wore. Experience in living had only deepened her beauty; even the shades of her hair had bronzed and darkened.
“Perhaps all happened as it was meant to happen.”
Her words caught him up short. He threw a look of questioning appeal at her.
“I would never have married you if you had come back for me—” Millie added, cutting off his protest, “And if I had, it would have been a disaster. And Nicholas, think. You loved Helena, and she gave you two beautiful children before she was taken away. I learned how to love because God brought Adria to me. I needed so much time, so much growing to prepare myself. All the work you did in Nauvoo, your growth, your contributions there—I believe all that was essential. Five years ago, a year ago, even, I would not have been ready—”
“But it has been ten years, Millicent!”
A faint smile, like the ghost of a memory, passed over her face. “Yes, ten years almost to the month. Oh, Nicholas, if only I had known during all the dark, terrible times when I was groping, unable to hope or to see any future at all.”
“It is so easy to forget that we are in God’s hands,” Nicholas said, and his face was dark with the memories of his own sufferings.
At
length she walked out into the gathering darkness with him. A lone curlew circled above their heads, and all the loneliness of the deep, restless sea waves was in its cry.
The children, hearing Millie’s voice, forgot their instructions and came running and stumbling to her over the sands. She gathered them into her arms one by one, and Nicholas, standing by watching, was embraced by her tenderness, too.
“I will return tomorrow,” he promised. Then, catching up her hands, said, “Will you wait for me, Millicent? I am here on a mission. It may be a long time.”
“A long time?” She turned her eyes and gazed seaward, over the dark world of water that constantly sang in her ears, sang with the fears and loves and longings of all mankind.
“I can wait, Nicholas,” she said calmly. “I, too, will have much to do.”
It was late when the train Nicholas rode pulled into the Boston station, and later still when he presented himself at Albert Forsyth’s door. Only a dim lamp burned on the hall table; all the dark house was still.
“You stayed to dinner, I see,” Brother Forsyth said as he opened the door to him. His eyes held an expression Nicholas was not able to read.
“We ate nothing at all, sir. We talked for hours—and hours.”
“I was hoping you would.” Brother Forsyth sighed, and then smiled when the lamp glow showed him the expression on the younger man’s face.
“I felt pretty sure you were the man Millie had told me of, though I cannot for the life of me remember if she ever once actually mentioned your name. It was something about you, and about the way you looked when you asked about Gloucester.” His eyes took on a gentle expression as he paused and considered for a moment. “No, it was more than that, son. It was one of those promptings of the Spirit that are so faint and still I might have overlooked it if I hadn’t been careful.”
They stood in silence for a moment. “Millie’s a rare, special woman.” Brother Forsyth placed his hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. “But I suppose you know that.”
“I want to marry her after this mission is over, Brother Forsyth—no matter how long that may take.”
Brother Forsyth smiled, and his eyes were beautiful in the soft circle of light. “I believe you’ve found the mission you were sent here for, Elder.” He gave Nicholas’s shoulder a fatherly pat. “That’s my own opinion, mind, but I’d be surprised if the brethren didn’t agree.”
The children slept at last after all the excitement of the stranger’s visit. But Millie walked the old path by the sea, wishing she could draw some of its deep, ancient power into her soul. It soothed her to think that the ocean could contain all the secrets and horrors of man, generation following generation, and still be the same.
Then she remembered and looked up to the heavens that stretched over her head. Both the high, endless heavens and the fathomless sea were contained by God. Yes, and the small beating heart of a every man and woman alive.
Knowing that, she believed she would never again be afraid. Knowing that, she could walk away from the ocean and the cottage on the shore, and live in the house on the desert which Judith had seen in her dream, and find out what it was like to be the wife of a man she loved.
“Good night, Nicholas,” she murmured, and her voice was only a breath beneath the voice of the tide. “Verity, I am coming.” Her heart sang out the words, and her joy was full. She walked with a sure stride along the cool sand, and the coils of white foam curled under her feet. She walked with the sounds of the sea and the night wind in her ears, and she walked in peace—because she knew, past fear, past doubting, that she did not walk alone.
About the Author
Susan Evans McCloud has published over fifty books in the LDS market. Her versatile works include biography, historical fiction, mystery, children’s books, and a volume of poetry. She also writes a column for the Mormon Times under the title of “In Our Lovely Deseret,” and is known for her screenplays, which include the award-winning John Baker’s Last Race, and her scores of lyrics for the Young Women, and for various Church seminary programs. She is best known for her two much-loved hymns “Lord, I Would Follow Thee” and “As Zion’s Youth In Latter-days.”
Susan is active in the LDS Church, and currently serves as a ward Gospel Doctrine teacher, and as an ordinance worker in the Provo City Center Temple. She is the mother of six children, grandmother of ten, great grandmother of five.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
About the Author
Landmarks
Cover
Table of Contents